


Bored & Brokenhearted

by UniversallyEcho



Series: season 2 of elite but make it wlw [1]
Category: Elite (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Study, F/F, Season 2 AU, Underage Drinking, basically just if the writers were smart and made rebe/lu a thing over rebe/samuel, ish, kind of just missing moments collectively intertwined with brief moments of pensiveness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-14
Updated: 2020-08-06
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:40:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25266235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UniversallyEcho/pseuds/UniversallyEcho
Summary: Lu kicks off her heels and pushes them to the side, shifting her body towards Rebe, “And you? What has you emulating the better half of a homeless prostitute?”Rebeka scoffs bitterly, she thought they went over this already. Her tone is one of obvious bluntness as she responds evenly, “My mom is in jail.”Lu blinks at her like that’s not reason enough. Rebeka grits her teeth. She opens another beer.She’s pretty sure it’s the beginning of the end.Or; Rebeka moves into Lu's house while the police raid hers.
Relationships: Rebeca "Rebe" de Bormujo Ávalos/Lucrecia "Lu" Montesinos Hendrich
Series: season 2 of elite but make it wlw [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2003338
Comments: 8
Kudos: 35





	1. i bet i took it way too far again.

**Author's Note:**

> The title and every chapter title is taken from the song "bored and brokenhearted" by Marisa Maino

The nightclub is tense and heavy with the atmosphere of each person currently occupying it. 

Rebeka can feel how tightly the muscles of her shoulders are coiled together under the gold of her bomber jacket and she reflects vaguely that it says something about this damned school that a single day returning to her studies can have her feeling like a snake itching to peel back it’s current layers of skin. 

She convinces herself to make something of the night even though the thing she actually wants to make is the abysmal concoction of ice cream and chocolate liqueur she used to share with her old friends in her old city during starry nights when they hung out on the small balcony of whoever’s parents were away on an ‘overnight business trip’ and breathed in the chilly polluted air of cigarette smoke. 

She’s feeling nostalgic.

It’s not her fault the club has decided to play, on repeat, a single playlist of throwback songs reminding her of when high school was just waking up every morning to go fraternize with the type of people you couldn’t be seen with outside of mandatory interactions and no one cared about their grades because no one was rich enough to afford the luxury of thinking about the future and everyone fought with their fists not with deception and people had boundaries and were blunt about their intentions and her family had horror movie nights and pizza every friday evening and she could still lean her head on her dad’s shoulder while her mom loudly teased the both of them for jumping every time a ghost appeared on the screen.

It’s ironic. She doesn’t jump now when she sees ghosts. Not when her own mind is so full of them. 

She finds Valerio sitting at the bar, alone, and she decides to join him because she’s melancholic and he’s bored. The both of them are too sober, sober through alcohol she’s not sure what kind of drugs Valerio has running through his veins at all hours of the day, to write off this potential hookup as a drunken mistake but too apathetic to attempt to acknowledge it as anything worth labeling.

She likes how her and Valerio are almost always on the same page. She doesn’t have to worry about what he’s actually thinking because if it’s ever something substantial, she trusts him to tell her. It’s a nice change of pace. He also thinks she’s hot and kisses her without her having to ask for it and brushes himself against her like he’s chasing a high only she can give to him. And, well, that’s a nice change of pace too, to feel needed. 

She can’t help but be a little disappointed when his addiction gets in the way of them fucking, which is kind of messed up of her because he clearly needs help but he’s basically a grown adult, he can handle it.

Luckily for her, what he lacks in common sense and survival instincts he makes up for in charitableness and as an apology for wasting her time he trails wet kisses on every part of her visible skin until she pushes his head to the one area she’d really appreciate he puts his tongue to work.

It’s a little awkward, him almost kneeling in front of her, pushing her up against the wall of the too small bathroom clearly not meant to fit two teenagers going down on each other and Rebeka knows she’s going to have imprints of weird tile shapes on her back the next morning. It’s worth it though. When she’s busy kissing him, her hands tracing at the oddly delicate squared-off sharp lines of his jaw, she can pretend that he’s the boy she’s dreamt of doing this with, if she closes her eyes tight enough she can convince herself it’s reciprocated.

She told Nadia she was over Samuel. And Rebeka isn’t a liar. So she is going to will herself hard enough to stop liking him, she needs to stop it before this little fantasy of hers gains any further traction in her mind. She has enough of wanting the love of someone who doesn’t give a shit about her.

⋆⋆⋆

Rebeka decides she’s going to divulge to Lu about what’s been happening with her brother for the past few days because she’d like to think of herself as a good person and standing around while a friend of hers clearly throws his life away for drugs doesn’t quite line up with that criteria.

She finds Lu lounging, draped against the arm of a couch placed obnoxiously in the corner of their school library and flipping through one of the poetry collections that was referenced in the newest english assignment Rebeka has been exceedingly avoiding, sonnets aren’t her strong suit and she finds it annoying how not a single writer is ever direct about what they actually mean. It pisses her off to no end that she thinks this could be some kind of a cruel metaphor for her life.

Lu is looking like every part of the cliche school girl magazine cover Rebe’s sure she used as her inspiration for her pose, one leg bent at the knee shifting her skirt up higher than the already tauntingly short hem, her back arched ever so slightly following the natural curve of the couch. If Rebeka didn’t know better she would just write it off as her being effortlessly dramatic. 

Rebeka walks over and crosses her arms against her chest, glancing once over at Lu and asking her entertained, “Are you reading or waiting for paparazzi to take a photo of you?”

Lu looks up at her, blinks slowly raising an expectant brow like she’s waiting for a reason why someone like Rebe would be allowed to start up conversation with her and when she doesn’t get one, drawls on, “Well, when you’re this important.” 

She makes a show of getting back to reading, licking a finger and flipping to the next page. God, Rebeka is already regretting this.

Rebeka grabs the book from her hands and ignores the way an offended huff leaves Lu’s lips.

Her tone is more serious this time, “I need to talk to you. It’s important.”

Lu looks at her pointedly and rolls her eyes, “I’m sure nothing you have to say is actually that important.”

While Rebeka _loves_ these passive aggressive back and forths, she has spent a good majority of their lunch period just searching for Lu and she’d kind of like to actually eat something before her next class so she decides to get right to the point, “It’s about Valerio.”

“What happened?” Lu’s face contorts into one of concern poorly concealed as exasperation and gets up immediately for further information. Rebeka thinks she would find that a bit more endearing if she hadn’t heard from Samuel about their previously rumoured incestuous relations.

She let’s Lu take the lead when they march up to a sleeping Valerio, partly because it is _her_ brother and partly because an enraged Lu is fun to watch when it’s not aimed at her. She’s kind of fascinating, all seething and short breaths and flailing arms, and Rebeka finds it unusually comical when Lu forces her way into Valerio’s face because it’s the only way she can intimidate him. So when Lu scoffs at the idea of Valerio sleeping with Rebe, she finds herself imagining what it would take to prove Lu wrong. 

She’s being delirious, this is what happens when she doesn’t eat for lunch, she’s sure these thoughts will resolve themself once she gets a soda or whiskey or something . 

She takes off to let the two of them handle their family shit in private and leaves the cafeteria feeling a strange satisfaction and contentment with herself.

Everything is good. Things are under control.

⋆⋆⋆

Rebeka should not find it as surprising as she does when all of those feelings deteriorate as rapidly as they arrived. She should have known her string of good luck, _it wasn’t even good luck for fucks sake just average at best_ , was bound to deplete. 

Everything goes to shit, and in no particular order, Rebeka finds herself dealing with the fact that: she has an irritatingly stubborn crush on Samuel that refuses to listen to reason and just disappear already, Ander, someone who was becoming increasingly important to her, has cancer and might just die from that fact, and Valerio has been living in his car for the past who knows how long and almost fucked her mom to get enough drugs to manage his addiction. 

Now, since Rebeka has spent the broad majority of her lifetime occupying herself with fixing other people’s lives to avoid the ever present disaster that is her own, she finds out rather quickly that caring so much everyday is exhausting. 

She works quickly and does everything in her power to help the people she knows probably wouldn’t even think twice if the same was happening to her. It’s fine. She’s happy like this. They need her, she helps them, it’s how things go.

It’s when she stumbles upon the long awaited revelation that Ander is dying and there’s nothing she can do to stop it, that she has sort of a mini meltdown. 

She’s sitting on the cheap leather sofa in Samuel’s living room, the two of them supposed to be studying, when he notices that she’s been kind of out of it for the past hour. She stares at her hands, fidgeting in her lap as she scratches her acrylic nails against each other. The button of her high-waisted pants digs into her abdomen when she slouches and throws her head back to stare at the ceiling. 

The words that come out of her mouth are impromptu whispers voicing the thoughts she had been trying for the longest time to ignore. She can’t stop her mind from replaying memories of her father. Memories she at the time cherished as pleasant childhood anecdotes and now only looks back at with regret and animosity. Before she knows it, she’s visualizing the many scenarios Nadia used to tell her about Marina and the kind of rash drama she would get herself into. The worst comes when she can no longer stop herself from thinking about the moments Ander’s sharing with his friends now, she tries not to think about the interactions they’d shared during the school day, she wonders if any of those are going to be his last.

“I don’t want to run out of time, man,” her sound is raspy and she’s trying so fucking hard not to cry that she doesn’t even notice how her voice cracks on the second last word.

When she finally builds the courage to actually look him in the eye, she wishes she hadn’t. He’s just staring at her, blankly, like a goldfish a younger version of herself would probably home in an old tank beside her bed. 

He doesn’t understand her, doesn’t know how she feels and quite honestly doesn’t even care to try to, just nods at her like he does whenever their history teacher is going on about them needing to put more effort in during the final stretch of the semester, clears his throat and says, “then do it. Whatever you want to do, do it.” 

‘That’s not the point, you idiot!’ she wants to yell, but the silence right now is too echoing and the moon is too bright and her thoughts so loud and she wants, for once in her fucking life, she just wants to do something reckless and wants to be brave and wants to take a chance and she wants to kiss him right now and she wants to watch his eyes fill with surprise when she does before kissing her back and she wants to date him and hold his hand and watch him watch her walk to class, she just, she just wants.

But she doesn’t. 

In hindsight, she will be grateful her cowardliness prevented her from making a huge mistake. In the moment though, she walks home with a heavy heart and stops by three trashy convenience stores until she finds a very specific brand of raspberry flavoured vodka and buys two bags of frozen cherries and spends the next of her night making good of those purchases, curled up against the edge of her bed and thinking of what her life would be like if her mom had never “won the lottery”. 

Then, as if things can’t get any worse, her mom is arrested and Rebeka has a very strong inkling and no solid evidence to back up why she thinks Samuel is the cause behind it.

⋆⋆⋆

Rebeka is greeted with the faces of a dozen stoic police officers investigating her house when she wakes up. 

Her morning is weirdly quiet and she finds herself just watching them over her cup of water for a solid fifteen minutes as they poke and prod in every corner of her personal belongings. She still manages to get ready for school, mainly because she doesn’t think she’d be allowed to just stay home, but the way she has to remind herself not to yell out to her mom about where a pair of her hoop earrings are or how she has to be careful about where she places her toothbrush because an officer will take it away in a ziploc bag for dna evidence gnaws quietly at the brittle parts of her. It’s borderline traumatizing. She’ll probably never fully get over it. 

She goes to school, and apparently everyone already knows about her mom and the alleged crimes against her. How? Rebe has no idea because she found out herself just hours prior, but that’s Las Encinas for you.

Any sneaking suspicions she had about Samuel are proven right when he walks up to her where she’s waiting at his lockers and looks to her with that stupidly disconnected and contemplative expression. There’s a peculiar string of tension hanging between them, she doesn’t know if he notices it, doesn’t even know if he realizes that she’s on to him, but the unspoken air sitting thickly there is the only thing keeping that string from snapping. And she’s not really in the mood to fight, so she doesn’t clue him in. That’ll come later. He’s always made her wait for gratification, this time’s no different.

The only sliver of brightness that saves her day is the lightheartedness she feels at Lu’s passing judgements and remarks that she lists off in passing throughout the halls. She finds it hilarious that there’s at least one other person realizing the absolute ridiculousness that is this school.

⋆⋆⋆

This time she’s dragged Valerio out to the outskirts of the yard surrounding the school. A bottle of alcohol sat in the grass between them, which is becoming a bit of a bad habit for them, except this time there’s no concern about getting caught because any rules about drinking on school property are exempt once past school hours, meaning Rebe doesn’t even bother with a flimsy paper bag.

There’s a lingering graze in the way their hands touch, pushing the bottle around. Not necessarily romantic, not necessarily sexual, not necessarily anything actually. They seem to do this often she realizes. Sharing moments. Coexisting. 

Rebe always finds her head buzzing gently, her conscious growing hazy, but her body completely tranquil when she’s around him. It’s not entirely from the alcohol, she gets like this on the few days she’s sober with him too. She thinks it’s his personality, or maybe just the way he’s high all the time, that as a consequence, has her feeling languid too. And, while Rebeka definitely doesn’t hate it, she also knows they both deserve better than another blurry meaningless relationship. So, for now, for this after school hang out anyway, her actions remain platonic. 

Currently he’s trying to sell her on the idea of moving in with the devil herself since Rebe’s been kicked out of her own house until the police gather all the evidence or whatever other findings they seem so sure they’re going to discover there.

“For the last time Valerio, no.”

She doesn’t understand, how he doesn’t understand, how terrible of an idea this is.

“Oh come on, her bite’s not as bad as her bark.”

Rebeka very politely disagrees with this. Lu’s smile looks straight up evil, she’s pretty sure those teeth would hurt. 

“I don’t get it, she can’t take you in because of your dad, but a random girl she’s gone to school with for a year your dad is fine with?”

As Valerio has tried to explain to her multiple times now, her dad is never home. Leaving their house almost always unoccupied but ever since a recent incident, Valerio very suspiciously prefers not to explain that one in explicit detail, he’s hired more intrusive housekeepers and general help to keep an eye on who’s in the house. With the atmosphere as on edge as it was, Valerio couldn’t bring himself to sneak in there, especially to try to live in the place for longer than just a momentary visit. 

When Rebeka tries to extract out of him what he did to so passionately fuel his father’s fury he vaguely replies, “Let’s just say, our dad and I really don’t get along.”

She nods numbly, thinking back to those nights in the club she shared with him, “Yeah, I bet.”

Her on the other hand, not only was she a girl and a classmate that no one working there would find suspicious, but she also didn’t have a preconceived notion working against her so her presence could easily be brushed off as a friend who was maybe just a little clingy and really liked sleeping over.

She steals the bottle from his hands when she watches him open his mouth again and she times her last swig, emptying the bottle, to hit her as Valerio reiterates, “I swear she acts differently at home. She’s not always so, well, you know.”

Rebeka shakes her head, because it’s frustrating how no one seems to even listen to her anymore, “I don’t care if she acts like fucking mother theresea at home, there is no way I will voluntarily spend even a second longer with her than I have to at school.”

“It’s not like you have anywhere better to go,” he says, not unkindly, and she drops the now empty bottle with a dull clink, watches it roll down the hill they’re sat atop of and dejectedly stop once it makes contact with a strategically placed trash bin against the concrete sidewalks. She _really_ doesn’t want to ask Samuel to sleep at his place tonight.

Her eyes meet Valerio’s, “And you’re sure she’s fine with this?”

He just shrugs, “Lu likes the idea of annoying our dad by bringing in another person he’ll have to pay for more than she likes the idea of you slumming it homeless for a week.”

Rebeka sighs loudly in resignation, because _,_ fantastic, yes, that’s the kind of enthusiasm she wants from a future host, “Reassuring.” 

⋆⋆⋆

Her first night at Lu’s goes smoothly, a bit too smoothly for her to actually feel any better about her new living arrangement.

They barely cross paths, finding ways to walk around the entirely too big house to avoid bumping into each other. Well, not Lu, Rebeka was doing the avoiding, Lu was still acting like no one else was occupying the space with her.

In fact, she thinks Lu has deliberately chosen to make herself complacent in every room Rebe so much as glances at, like a cat trying to defend its territory. Or a tiger. Definitely more like a tiger. 

Rebeka notices her curled up at the edge of her kitchen counters, one hand holding a glass of wine and the other seemingly scrolling on her phone. She’s already taken off her makeup and her hair has been loosely tied into a braid. It’s a bit disconcerting. Rebeka’s not sure she likes the recent atmosphere of domestication, it’s harder to brush off Lu as just another paper cut out of a school bitch when there’s this image of a humane girl looking back at her. 

The sun is starting to set and she thinks the spotlight of the moon shining from her huge floor to ceiling windows gives her away because it’s at that moment that Lu looks up from her phone and spots her peeking through from the hallway. Their eyes lock, Lu’s narrowing and her eyebrows creasing, her head tilting and Rebeka is swiftly reminded how ruthless Lu actually is and it’s fucking absurd, really, how violently she turns around to walk to the guest room she knows is already set up for her.

Had this been anyone else, had this been any other day, she would have succumbed to the challenge, let Lu pick a fight like she knows she wanted to and let it act as a release to her pent up frustration. But not tonight, she was just a little too exhausted to care about nonsensical arguments tonight.

She spends the greater part of her night watching the little pendants of the chandelier above her knock into each other. She can hear Lu’s animated chatter on the phone in the room beside her.

⋆⋆⋆

The next school day is worse than the last and Rebeka is helplessly, immeasurably distressed as she opens the door to her temporary residence. She feels a knot tightening in her gut and she can almost hear the stuttered pulse in her throat and it’s a sense of homesickness that she’s not sure she’s felt since she was like, maybe 12. 

She’s being ridiculous because the truth of the matter is that she hasn’t even stayed at the house still under the police’s possession long enough to consider it much of a home to miss and quite honestly she thinks even if she was still living there, this sense of dread would be very much present in her system. Right now though, as she’s left to fend for herself without even her punching bag or a cabinet filled with alcohol to use as coping mechanisms, she’s kind of at a loss of what to do next.

She knows Lu stayed after class to a talk a teacher into raising her mark for a pop quiz they had for studies of literature, she didn’t get anything wrong just thinks that she should be handed bonus points for correcting one of the questions, and then she’s also leading an extracurricular club meeting so Rebeka has at least ten minutes, after leaving Samuel’s house and listening to him further conspire about Polo, to collect herself without interruption.

She stole a pack of beer from him, more like guilted him until he was willing to basically let her take whatever she wanted from his house, and she doesn’t bother even chilling them before she opens one and let’s herself drown in the bitterness. 

She spreads out the cans on the low coffee table in the living room like they’re her to-do list for the day and she’s getting ready to check them off one by one and not like how they’re actually a physical manifestation of her deteriorating mental stability. She sits on the cold wood floor, because she can’t trust herself not to spill the beer on the couch and she can’t trust Lu not to kill her for it when she inevitably does, and she’s drank her way through about three quarters of the first can, she really underestimated how much she hated the taste of warm beer, when she hears the sound of the door creaking open and a bag thudding gently to the ground.. 

The house is eerily quiet enough to hear the sound of pin drop so it’s not startling that Rebe can vividly pinpoint Lu’s distance from the door to the living room through the clicking of her heels on marble floors. It _is_ startling that her pulse races with adrenaline and a pulsing knot of tension forms in her stomach as each step gets closer. It must be the beer, she reasons.

Lu’s walks past her to gently place her keys and miscellaneous necessities on top of a loveseat across the room. Her face is the epitome of stunned exasperation when she jerks in surprise once spotting Rebe looking up at her, “What the fuck are you doing?” 

She’s still in her school uniform, obviously, and she looks a little tired from running around all day but still manages to pull off that semi-ruffled naturally alluring look, which kind of bugs Rebe to no end, especially since it is way too hot and full of humidity for Lu’s hair to look as good as it does.

“Aren’t you supposed to be smart? You’re never going to rank first in the class with questions like that,” she says wryly, stretching her legs from their position against her chest, suddenly feeling too vulnerable in the self-consoling stance.

She watches Lu roll her eyes and mutter under her breath,“You’re such a pain in my ass.”

Rebeka finds herself feeling much too accomplished at that than is reasonably acceptable. 

Lu uses her phone as a mirror to check on her appearance and then frowns at Rebe a few minutes later when she notices her still drinking the disgusting beer silently watching with a blank expression, “Are you planning on sitting here for the rest of the day?”

Rebeka places the beer down like she’s really thinking about it, the floor is hard and cold but it also kind of evens out her body temperature from the incoming consumption alcohol so overall she’s decently comfortable, “Yes,” she concludes and as an afterthought adds, “Why, are you having friends over?”

It’s a genuine question, not one of those mocking ones her and Lu are so used to throwing at each other, but Lu still scoffs like Rebe said something wrong or deliberately offensive. It takes her longer than it should to remember that she hasn’t seen Lu talking to Carla or Guzman or anyone else in their little clique at school recently. 

“You could join me,” Rebe starts cautiously, she has no idea what she’s doing or why she’s doing it but watching Lu standing there squinting at her makes her think that maybe she could use the company and it’s evident by the lack of haste to get ready that Lu’s got nowhere else to go either. Besides, it’s not like she hasn’t faced rejection in life enough times to be desensitized by it now in the unlikely case she’s read the situation wrong and Lu’s ready to rip into her for suggesting something so outlandish.

“Ew,” Lu retorts evenly, nose scrunched in disgust as she takes a look to the alcohol selection and then back at Rebe’s face.

Well, that’s that. At least she tried. 

Lu turns away and Rebe’s pretty sure she’s going to go and lock herself in her room for the rest of the evening or maybe go join a random person's weekday party and get trashed alone. Imagine her surprise when Lu instead disappears into the kitchen, searching in her fridge, until she resurfaces with a bottle of margarita mix, something syrupy, a pitcher with ice in it and two glasses. 

She manages her way towards Rebe with minimum fumbling, much less than if Rebeka were in her place and she finds herself oddly impressed by that. Rebe sits there dumbly as Lu takes the beer from her and mixes an impromptu combination of the ingredients in front of her. 

Once she’s done, she takes a sip of her glass and winces before handing the other one to Rebe, “I can’t do much more than that with such terrible alcohol.”

Rebeka takes her own sip at that and it’s, it’s not good, literally _any_ other drink would be better than this but, it’s sweeter, it’s slightly more gentle, it’s inexplicably more tolerable.

Rebeka doesn’t ask when Lu steals a cushion from behind her and sits down, far away enough to not be touching but close enough that she feels the warmth emitting from the other girl’s body, she just looks outside to the view of their pool and counts the clouds she can see looming overhead. She thinks she read on twitter it was going to storm tonight.

Lu heaves an impatient sigh and Rebe watches from the side of her eyes as she tucks her hair behind her ears. 

“What?” She asks because really she knows the entire long-suffering essence of the sigh was meant to get her attention but she’s not the ‘sleepover and gossip at a best friend’s house’ type so she lacks the subtlety she’s sure Carla or Cayetana or even Nadia would have in the same situation. 

“Nothing,” Lu states sharply. 

They both drink in silence then. Rebeka reaches under her shirt and clasps open her bra, reaching through her sleeve to pull it out, and then melts into the edge of the sofa behind her. She takes a deep breath before drinking from the delicate crystal and tries not to thinkabout how it feels perilously fragile in her hands or how her mom is probably getting ready to sleep on a cold metal bed tonight, _again_. She doesn’t know why the two correlate in her head, they do though, and she can’t quite seem to wash away the tartness of that revelation off her tongue.

It’s when her glass is empty and her head is feeling a little floaty that Lu deems her safe enough to confess whatever personal admission is plaguing her mind without the concern that Rebeka will remember or care enough to share with anyone that next morning at school. 

Rebeka finds it hard to be concerned that this entire interaction was basically a ploy to get her drunk when that was honestly her own plan for the night anyway, if Lu wants to use inebriated her as an outlet to air whatever drama is crippling her current social status among peers, then who is Rebe to stop her.

“So, did you know about the whole Polo being a murderer thing?” Her entire sentence comes out casual enough and Rebe wouldn’t find anything off about it if it weren’t for the way her lips had tightened into a line.

Oh. That’s what this is about.

“Guzman wants you to take his side,” She cuts her off. 

She thinks maybe Lu likes feeling needed too otherwise she has a very strange way of acting indifferent.

“I don’t care about what he wants,” Lu says acidically, her clear coat of lip gloss fading just as haphazardly as her negligently produced lie.

“Maybe,” is all Rebe says in reply.

Lu’s resulting glare is fierce but wilts quickly, replaced by a profoundly uncomfortable scowl.

Lu kicks off her heels and pushes them to the side, shifting her body towards Rebe, “And you? What has you emulating the better half of a homeless prostitute?”

Rebeka scoffs bitterly, she thought they went over this already. Her tone is one of obvious bluntness as she responds evenly, “My mom is in jail.”

Lu blinks at her like that’s not reason enough. Rebeka grits her teeth. She opens another beer.

She’s pretty sure it’s the beginning of the end.


	2. can't be alone now that it's over

Rebeka doesn’t like to think of herself as someone who has trouble relinquishing control. She  _ likes _ to think that her childhood has raised her to be somewhat encouraging of change. She especially likes to think that she’s significantly more well adjusted than the mass of alcoholic, drug addicted, neurotic tortured souls that spent their first night on this earth sleeping in a ritzy golden crib. 

Liking to think something and actually being right about said thing, do not go hand in hand. Usually it just means that she's wrong and is trying, almost always ineffectively, to avoid confronting that fact. 

This week has been a real testament of that. 

⋆⋆⋆

There’s a contrastingly stark difference between yearning to be cared for and wanting the pitied attention that comes with getting cornered in a vulnerable situation. Rebe prides herself on the sort of boundaries she’s established to protect the latter incident from transpiring, even if that also meant sacrificing the former. 

She loathed uprooting her entire life for her mother’s delusional idea of ‘doing what’s best for them as a family,’ as if they hadn’t just abandoned the people they used to always say needed to stick together, for the sole purpose of climbing the socio-economic ladder in the least virtuous way possible. 

Even so, she survived. 

One could even make the argument that without the challenge of actively seeking out the few people in this place who don’t nauseate her with their self-indulgent privileged ideology, she wouldn’t have found a friend group as compatible as she did.  _ She _ definitely wouldn’t make this argument, but one could. 

Being kicked out of Las Encinas doesn’t feel like another arbitrary challenge forcing her to prove her worth in a sea of entitled teens. It feels like a bucket of icy cold water drenching through her clothes, seeping under the surface of her skin and chilling so deeply into her bones that she’s never so careless as to forget her place again. Reminding Rebeka glacially that her aspirations for a future, as unremarkable and dull and harmless as they are, rely directly on her mother’s ability to coerce unsuspecting people to do her evil bidding for her. 

The real blow to the gut comes when Rebeka realizes she’s just as willing to play along in the same game if it means securing her spot in the ludicrous school, where the only consistent thing about them is their insistence on her not belonging. 

_ Seriously, what is it with her and wanting things that so clearly do not want her back? _

Rebeka likes to think she’s a good person. She’s not. And the universe is finally starting to call her out on it. 

⋆⋆⋆

“So, is the looking miserable and binge drinking thing a new habit for you or just a personality flaw?” 

At the familiar sharp tone Rebeka looks up from her glass, filled to brim with the first alcoholic bottle she could find on the center table walking in. She sips, more like gulps, very heavily gulps, from the cup before making eye contact with the brunette standing in front of her. 

Lu’s staring down at her, almost condescendingly, with her hip tilted out and a sigh escaping her lips. Her hair is still impeccably in place, an impressive feat considering how frantically she had been parading around the house when Rebe had first arrived.

It’s an hour or so into the party now, and as things seem to be slowly winding down Lu must have grown bored of harassing the guys dancing in the living room and decided to join her watching aimlessly on the sidelines. 

Rebeka doesn’t answer her at first, moves to take another swig of her drink in preparation instead, only to be interrupted when Lu steals the cup straight out of her hand and finishes it all in one breath, despite the fact that her own glass is still not even close to being empty. Rude. 

Rebe’s only consolation is the sight of Lu’s face as she swallows the unidentified throat-burning liquor, which is almost enough to lift a smile from the corner of Rebe’s mouth. 

Lu winces and almost childishly, almost amusingly, stomps one of her heels on the ground as she does.

She shakes her head and groans in disappointment as she finally recovers before complaining, “I should have known none of these people would have good taste. Who even drinks sambuca anymore?” 

Rebeka opens her mouth but Lu isn’t actually looking for a response, pushing at Rebe’s shoulder before she can get any sound out.

“Move,” she demands, still nudging at her. And, well, Rebeka doesn’t really have a choice does she? When Lu wants something, she gets it, and right now she seems to want nothing more than to burrow herself next to Rebeka’s side on the stiff tufted ottoman Rebeka had fought for possession over against a horny couple just minutes prior.

The clumsy way in which she would have slipped off the seat had it not been for Rebeka’s quick reflexes has Rebeka taking a closer look at Lu.

“Are you drunk?” She asks curiously.

Rebeka’s pretty sure she knows the answer to that already, she’s seen what drunk Lu looks like and while the girl sitting next to her is noticeably more sloppy and hell bent on ignoring personal space bubbles, she’s not exactly as flushed or showy as Rebeka knows she could be. It alarms her that she notices this but she buries the concern deep within the back of her conscience. She’s getting extra good at doing that lately.

She thinks that Lu’s eyes are weirdly bright. Lighter and glinting in a way Rebeka doesn’t think she’s ever seen before in Lu. Maybe  _ she’s _ the one that’s drunk? That would make more sense.

“By one drink? Please,” Lu scoffs then, offended at Rebeka’s low regard for her alcohol tolerance.

Lu’s knees knock against her own in outrage and Rebeka wishes she still had her drink to throw back. 

“Don’t you have hosting jobs to do?” She asks because she knows she is minutes away from doing something really really stupid, and figures the most responsible thing to do is give a warning beforehand. The actual responsible thing to do is probably to just get up and go home while she’s still sober enough to do so but her house is still off limits and she’s pretty sure she saw a group of four walk upstairs to her guest room. She doesn’t feel like walking in on an orgy right now. She’s kind of sick of seeing people in love, or lust, whatever, same difference.

“Nope. That’s the best thing about a reverse party, my job was done the moment I gave out the envelopes,” she boasts proudly. 

“So, what? You’re just going to sit around and supervise the others for the rest of the night?” 

Rebeka doesn’t understand why Lu is here, why she’s still talking to her and sitting next to her and giving her more attention than any of her actual friends have since they got here. She’s pretty sure she doesn’t like it, but it’s getting increasingly harder to convince herself as much.

Lu counters, “Isn’t that exactly what you’re doing?”

She supposes they really are two sides of the same coin. Rebeka’s not completely sober, but if she was, she might try to deny the fact that their similarities bring her some comfort. The girl is fucked up and she’s the best at bringing out the worst in others, but it’s that exact unique sense of brutality that Rebeka finds solace in. Well, finds as much solace as she allows herself to feel during their select moments of shared loneliness.

She would have been happy spending the rest of the evening like that. With Lu of all people. Taking up space in their secluded corner. Kinda silently sitting in their own individual pity parties, but, you know, together. 

Of course, that should have been her first sign that that wouldn’t be the ending of her night. She thinks she might have killed someone important in her past life. She can’t think of any other reason why the universe would be doing this to her.

The person she least wants to see right now makes his way towards them then. She can’t even make a getaway in time because Lu is staring pensively at her glass, paying no attention to the panic unfurling quietly in Rebeka. 

Samuel walks up to them, looking every part of a knock off moody black sheep, trying to do what Omar had done in an embellished white blazer and failing disastrously, made even worse with the heavy eyeliner, unfitting for the inherent white-bread niceness she had once noticed in him and unintelligibly fallen for. And if she was a little crueler or a little further along in her course of processing Samuel’s betrayal she would have cursed him out right then and there. She still wishes she did. 

His voice is even more annoying than she remembers, “Hey, I’m probably going to leave now.”

Rebeka doesn’t spare him a glance, he certainly never did to her so why should she offer him any time or general awareness, “Do whatever you want, you don’t need to tell me.” 

“Uh, okay,” His expression falters for less than a second and had she not spent the better part of the last year obsessing over the miniscule way his eyebrows furrow when he’s confused, she wouldn’t have caught on to how his smile at her is more tight and uncomfortable than usual. Not understanding why she’s suddenly using her passive aggressive tone, customarily preserved for people outside her circle of friends, on him. He tries to move past it as subtly as he can, “so I guess I’ll see you at school?”

She’s not letting him off the hook that easily, not anymore, “I don’t know Samuel, maybe if you find time between your unhealthy obsessive brooding and palpable pining for someone who has decidedly chosen to upgrade to a smarter, richer and less snooty model. Maybe then you’ll see me.” 

Samuel blanches and Rebeka is slightly ashamed to feel a feral rush of satisfaction run through her veins. Good. He should be as disoriented and unsteady and jumbled as he has made her feel this entire week, this entire year. And, okay, maybe she’s not being entirely fair to him. She doesn’t know the circumstances of his decisions and barely even has any distinct evidence to pinpoint against him. But, honestly, she doesn’t really feel like being fair right now. Not when he has never once been fair to her.

He clears his throat and she catches in the corner of her eye that he clenches his fist, like he’s holding himself back from awkwardly running his hand through his hair in the way he always does when he’s nervous, “Right, well, until then I guess.”

He hesitates before patting her on the shoulder.

She glances at his hand. He doesn’t remove it.

The butterflies fluttering inside her gut don’t make her giddy like they used to. They don’t act as a symbol of the ridiculous kind of young love she used to make fun of her childhood friends for watching movies of. 

There’s no relentless tightness in her chest when he does as little as acknowledge her presence like there used to be. No more sweaty palms she would anxiously rub against her thighs or small smiles of amusement she would force herself to hide when she watched him struggle to figure out the especially demanding algebra equation on their cumulative math tests. No more warmness blooming against her chest when he beamed up at her as she explained where he went wrong behind the teacher’s back.

All the same tell tale signs were there. She still felt like she was perched at the edge of the highest point of a rollercoaster, waiting for the imperative drop. Except the rose coloured glasses she was wearing as she boarded had swiftly dropped from her face as the ride increased in speed and bumpiness. And waiting in anticipation now as she balanced, looking down to what would soon be her fate, she realized there was no seat belt securing her in place and no ending to look forward to either. The ride continued to drop perpetually. 

Lu’s eyes dart from Rebeka to Samuel and back again.

Perceptive as she is, she gets up slowly from her seat and tries to wrap things up cleanly, “As nice as it was having you Samuel, Rebeka and I have some locker room chit chat awaiting us.”

Rebeka doesn’t notice when Lu grabs her hand to start dragging her in the opposite direction. Samuel notices. It’s the first time he’s noticed anything at all concerning her.

His perplexity grows, “You and Rebek —”

“Shh,” Lu forces a hand over his mouth before he can voice any thoughts, “You’re so much prettier when you don’t talk.”

Rebeka would snort at the image of a startled Samuel so clearly caught off guard, if she wasn’t too busy being physically hauled away. She pulls at Lu’s arm but her grip is unyielding. If anything she tightens her grasp on Rebeka’s wrist at her opposition, until they eventually make it to the side of the hall where the music blasts the loudest and people are crowded enough that they’re incapable of distinguishing themselves from the others.

Lu doesn’t suggest as much as she states, “We’re going to dance.”

“Why?” Rebeka asks, more out of habit than actual interest.

Lu ponders, before coming up with, “Because you don’t look like you’re having the best time and I can’t have people thinking my parties aren’t fun enough to distract them from the real world.”

Rebeka arches an eyebrow but she’s not sure Lu is facing her enough to actually see it, “Isn’t that kind of a big promise to make about a party?”

Lu sighs at her like she should know better by now, “Weren’t you the one who told me to stop asking stupid questions?”

Rebeka likes dancing. Rebeka also likes drinking to the point of near incoherency. These two go hand in hand and often result in terrible decisions she will come to regret the next day. That’s not a problem if you just drink enough to blackout. You can’t regret something you don’t remember.

⋆⋆⋆

Holidays aren’t usually the kind of thing Rebeka likes to celebrate.

She’d always found Halloween pointless, no use in spending so much time dressing up and walking around for a couple of substandard pieces of candy she’d just end up getting a stomach ache from anyway. 

Christmas was disappointing, a time she was told was meant to be magical but was always just too early and too regretful and too melancholic. A time when their decorated tree was rushed because her parents were working too much the month before to help her set it up and the gifts under it were always from the clearance section of whatever department store had the best customer point system. 

Valentine’s day was fun enough in elementary school when it was more about your friends than it was about boys but then Rebeka grew up and could never stay in a relationship long enough for the day to sentimentally mean something.

New Year’s day is the only holiday she still looks back on fondly. 

Her determination and unfounded resolution was strong even at 8 years old when she decided it was her year to finally stay awake until midnight like all the cooler older kids. Her need to be tougher and aim greater and act older was strong even then.

The years prior she had always fallen asleep too soon, her young brain not persistent enough to not give in at the first sign of tiredness. Not at 8 though. At 8 she finally managed to do it, her small family huddled in front of the clunky tv in their living room, the cheapest kind still being sold in store, and she watched the animated numbers counting down until her parents shouted with tangibly infectious glee and pulled at mini confetti poppers and Rebeka was exhilarated with sounds she didn’t register at the time as a glass bottle clinking against worn down wood and the thumping pop and fizz of a flying champagne cork. 

Her dad gifted her with a kaleidoscope. Nothing special, just a small paper tube with an opening for her to look in, decorated on the outside with little cartoon illustrations of stars, but Rebeka held onto it like it contained the secrets of the universe.

Her parents drank from cut-crystal tumblers, single handedly the most expensive items in the house ordered from their wedding registry, and eventually left to sleep as they both had early work mornings awaiting them, but Rebeka didn’t. 

Rebeka had laid on the carpet floor with wisps of silver tinsel in her hair and stared into the toy, entranced by the pretty colours and shapes inside. An entire new world of shades and hues and symmetry and a dizzying enchantment to look more and look closer.

Dancing with Lu is like that.

The layers of her personality are guarded with sharp edges of a prism, daring others to last longer than a minute staring at her without their eyes flickering closed from the glaring brightness. Fragments of unspoken distress and ruined promises are blindly intertwined together by a, too strong to be healthy, will to not become a miscellany of the people around her. Her prematurely established sense of self enabled the creation of microscopic complexities throughout the past years that now shifting your gaze ever so slightly reveals she’s something entirely new. 

Despite all the contrasting layers and parts, she seems so sure of who she is. Rebeka doesn’t think she’s ever been that definite of anything, let alone of herself, always too muddled by her surroundings to come to much of a finite conclusion.

Staring at her, Rebeka is reminded how tired she is. She’s tired of pretending, tired of clawing desperately out of the grasp of people’s expectations of her. Tired of trying to be a good person. Tired of not even knowing if she’s succeeding, or failing, or starting too late and questioning too much. And so, if she dances a little too closely or brushes herself against Lu a little more than is appropriate of a newly renounced enemy. Well, it’s just one dance. One dance can’t hurt anyone. And the kiss that follows when they’re a couple more hours in and the supply of alcohol has slowly diminished in front of them. Well, it’s just one kiss. Then two. Then three. 

She remembers each one. It’s worse that she remembers each one.

⋆⋆⋆

She helps Lu clean up the mess the next morning. She’s sober for that. There’s an underlying dizziness,  _ a fuzziness she supposes is more accurate, _ obscuring the edges of those interactions too. She blames her hangover for those aftereffects.

⋆⋆⋆

Rebeka decides to go into the drug business with Valerio who, alright, may not be the  _ most _ reliable person out there but he’s one of the only she can trust to at least somewhat have her best interest in mind. Besides, he’s the only person she really knows with that much experience in the field, which is a necessity because she has absolutely no idea what she’s doing. She’s always tried her hardest to keep her nose out of her mom’s business, now that she’s going into the same dealings, nearly with complete blindness, she’s starting to regret that. 

They’ve built some kind of routine by now, working like a well oiled machine as they package drugs to sell the next day and catching up with easy conversation as they do so. And she thinks that’s partially why she trusts him too, there’s no forced words or empty gestures with him, he mirrors the candid openness she’s come to cherish in it’s rarity.

He’s crouched over a little, leaning towards her in spite of the round table standing between them, and mentions in that mellow careless tone that comes so naturally to him, “You better feed me after this, I missed a dinner date because of you.” 

She rolls her eyes, subconsciously relieved that his teasing half-cocked grin reveals that he’s not actually inconvenienced by her. 

The mention of romantic relations doesn’t take her by surprise, she’s pretty sure the entire student body has noticed Valerio’s sudden engagement with modern day Bonnie & Clyde, but Rebeka has never brought it up or acknowledged it in front of him. She’s not one to judge but if she was, this situation is one she’d probably take a second look at. 

It’s not the quantity of people she’s unsure about, she’s just not convinced a rumoured murderer is the ideal type of person Valerio should be mingling with. But hey, she doesn’t exactly have the best track record when it comes to crushes, case in point the reason she’s even partnering with Valerio in the first place, so, who is she to judge?

She retorts notably, “You’re literally getting a share from the profit, would you rather I pay you in fried food?” and smiles when he feigns a guilty expression. 

She’d always been a little worried about him, could never help but think that the ‘carpe diem’ mentality of his had an expiration day, one that was quickly approaching and coincided with the moment he realized he couldn’t outrun an internal gnawing ache of emptiness inside, one that would reign devastatingly and he’d be too far gone in his self-sabotaging spree for anyone to reach a hand out and save him. 

He seems happier now, a little like whatever burden was so heavily weighing him down had been lifted from his shoulders, if only just a bit, and she hopes a little naively that his dates, significant others,  _ what’s the term when there’s three of them _ , lovers maybe, stay around long enough to fulfill an implausibly happy ending together. 

There’s a low thrumming mechanical whir of a barely functioning air conditioner working overtime somewhere above them and she thinks her sigh gets caught somewhere between the vibrations as she relents, “Fine, we can get takeout.” 

⋆⋆⋆

It’s not until they're both two and a half slices into the olive and mushroom pizza, if she didn’t still feel instinctively guilty about dragging Valerio into her mess she would have insisted on pineapple, that Valerio’s assertion on virtually inherent frivolous chatter resurfaces. 

“So,” he starts almost tentatively, “it looks like you’re surviving rooming with Lu relatively unscathed.”

Valerio takes one of her arms, gently turning it around in his hand in fake inspection, poking her softly as he questions in mock seriousness, “no scratches, no permanent scars, no newly formed trauma?”

Rebeka scoffs and pulls her arm away, “None that I know of, not that that’s very telling. I heard somewhere that most PTSD repercussions are actually all mental.”

Valerio hums in understanding, “It’s a good thing then that you’re the only person who’s hard headed enough to not be fucked psychologically from living with her.”

Rebeka’s not really sure what to make of that statement, not really sure where he’s going with this so she turns to look at him and that just seems to mystify her even more. 

There’s a practiced feigned casual arch of his eyebrow when he continues, “But maybe fucked in other ways, no?”

It’s ridiculous the way her breath hitches a little at that. She doesn’t know why it feels like he’s trying to draw a confession out of her. It’s not like there’s anything to even confess, she’s done more wrongful stuff with objectively worse people and felt less bad about it. She shouldn’t feel like a little kid being caught red handed trying to scrummage for a treat in the cookie jar. 

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she responds and feels a simmering inevitable repentance at the blatant lie.

⋆⋆⋆

“This is your fault,” Lu claims, peering skeptically at the gold metal pot on the stove still releasing fumes of smoke into the already dense air.

Rebeka responds incredulously, “How? Please explain to me how any of this is my fault?” 

“I don’t know yet,” Lu comments, eyeing the scene distrustfully like the sizzling burnt pan is a savage animal that could attack her at any moment, “but it has your weird poor people energy all over it.”

Rebeka’s pretty sure there are more prominent issues at hand but she can't stop herself from retorting, “You do realize that you actually have even less money than me right?” 

Lu purses her lips but otherwise disregards her response, keeping her eyes too firmly fixed in one place to be disregarded as nonchalant behaviour.

Rebeka should have seen this coming. Honestly, it’s her own fault for trusting that leaving Lu alone for even a second in a lit kitchen would end in disaster. A disaster that not only would she be blamed for but then also have to clean up herself. This is what she gets for trying to make a decently healthy dinner for them in contrast to all the takeout junk they’ve both been begrudgingly filling up on. It’s in moments like these when she wishes her mom would just come home so she wouldn’t have to rely on reheating unsustainable leftovers, her mom isn’t even a good cook but anything that doesn’t leave oil residue on paper napkins would satisfy her at this point.

Lu looks a little crestfallen too which is more jarring than it should be. Rebeka is used to disappointment, is even used to the special kind of helpless overwhelming disappointment that you bring onto yourself. She’s not used to disappointing others, doesn’t like the way it pinches Lu’s features in the center of her face, like she’s pained for even being stuck in this situation at all.

The role of a fixer comes to her naturally as she hurries to brush off the issue, “It’s fine, this isn’t a big deal.”

Lu scoffs, her attention now drifting to her phone sitting on the other side of the room, no doubt wondering how long it would take for her to order something online, “No? The fire alarm certainly seemed to think otherwise.” 

On first instinct Rebeka reaches over to grasp the handle of the pot with intentions to move it over to the sink or something, hoping that running cool water will prevent the pan from being irrevocably damaged. She’s not sure if copper lined cookware can be restored, not even sure why she cares when Lu evidently doesn’t and it’s  _ her _ cookware, all she knows is that Food Network didn’t prepare her for this shit.

Lu startles her by grabbing at Rebe mere seconds before she makes contact with the pot. Rebeka hadn’t noticed until now how perfectly Lu’s hand wraps around her wrist, fingertips enclosing around her almost daintily.

She doesn’t have much time to ponder that realization before she tunes in to Lu’s scolding, “Do you have no regard for personal safety? That was literally on fire, you’re going to burn yourself.”

Rebeka rolls her eyes, still not entirely used to Lu’s compulsion for dramatics.

“It’s not even hot,” she argues, following through with her previous actions and immediately regretting it as a searing flash of pain works its way up her arm. 

She doesn’t drop the object causing this distress, obviously, because she’s not about to prove Lu right even if she’s pretty sure Lu can very clearly see right through her pathetic attempt of masking the pain. Rebeka’s face has always made it way too easy for others to read her emotions.

It’s just a small burn, barely the size of half her palm, and she’s sure it’ll peel and heal over within the next couple of days. Rebeka turns the faucet on with the hand not currently seizing in raw ache, let’s the pan soak, doesn’t bother cooling her injury, and turns, reluctantly, to face Lu.

Lu’s staring at her, waiting for a reaction, looking unaccountably smug. When she doesn’t get one she starts, “You really should just listen to me from now on, it would save you from  _ so _ many mistakes.” 

Rebeka’s not sure if she should be more offended by Lu’s lack of doting or continuous belittling, she tries not to acknowledge how it actually doesn’t bother her at all.

“Are you ever reasonable?” Rebeka finally asks.

Lu considers this, almost musingly, before taking a step toward and saying in an exaggerated stage-whisper, “Not particularly, no.”

Rebeka suddenly finds her throat a little dry and reaches around to pass Lu, putting some space between them, as she gets a bottle of water. 

She can feel Lu’s eyes still on her, can feel them almost studying her. They’ve done this a lot since she’s moved in, watching each other, waiting for someone to make a mistake the other can poke fun at, becoming increasingly aware when they notice characteristics that both of them usually go out of their way to hide in public.

Except this time there’s a vivid edge to her stare, like at some point in the past week Lu decided to direct all those pent-up feelings of being overlooked and wanting inclusivity at school into instead figuring out the best and most productive ways to irritate Rebeka at home. Into dissecting her words and their lack of continuity with her actions. Into understanding her.

It makes Rebeka uneasy, understandably so, for someone to be observing her that closely. Especially when that person is exceptionally skilled at tearing down others using their intimate peculiarities. Especially when that person is Lu.

Especially when Rebeka, no matter how unconscious it is, reciprocates that inquisitiveness. 

⋆⋆⋆

They find themselves sitting on the hardwood floor again, Rebeka’s back molding against the border of a seat, Lu’s sock-clad feet settled on the coffee table at their forefront, a small tub of chocolate ice cream the only boundary between them. 

None of this is good for her, physically speaking. Her back aches against the forced curve she’s positioned it at and she can concretely feel her abs losing definition with each bite she takes of the creamy dessert that’s really more deluxe than it is tasty. Dark chocolate ‘swirls’ should never  _ ever _ be produced over actual chunks of bitter chocolate deliberately spaced out inside the container, whoever is convinced otherwise has played into the ploy name brand companies use to brainwash the public. 

Lu rolls her shoulders back trying to find relief in the tense muscles and turns suddenly, using her spoon to point almost accusatory at Rebeka, “Wasn’t there another party we were supposed to go to tonight?”

_ We. _ Rebeka supposes it’s fair that with the amount of time they’d involuntarily spent together that they would be grouped into a we now. 

She shrugs, following the path of Lu’s silver spoon as it dips into the carton and then into her mouth, barely grazing her lips but still managing to leave a slick sheen,“Probably, there always is.”

She swallows and shakes her head, whether it’s with admission or discontent, Rebeka can’t tell.

And then, as if it’s just dawned on Lu the situation they’ve found themselves in, completely picturesque of a casual night-in between two close friends, that seems minutely  _ off _ somehow, like it’s trying very hard to be something it’s not, something it can’t actually be, Lu snorts.

“We’re kind of pathetic. Who chooses staying in to eat in silence over going to a club?” Lu’s words are laced with faux mockery.

“We’re not pathetic. I’d rather be doing this anyway,” Rebeka lets out, expanding only when Lu looks at her questioningly, “there’s some people I think I’m avoiding.”

Lu echoes, “You think?” 

“I want to avoid him, what he did warrants avoidance, but, if I go through with it, I feel like doing that would be confirming something with too much finality,” Rebeka trails off. 

This is barely a secret. She’s carried the thought, the fact, that he hurt her and that she had  _ let _ him hurt her,  _ again _ , for a while now. It’s not a secret, but it’s ached like one, dug into her like one, exposes her like one. 

She wants to take her words back as soon as they leave her mouth, wants to go back to denying any semblance of fragility. She would consider leaving, maybe make some excuse about how it’s getting late and that they need to be up early and brush this interaction under the rug like she has with so many of her vulnerabilities now. 

She would consider it but Lu is hitting her spoon rhythmically, absentmindedly, against the lid, not letting a settled silence fall upon them.

Lu locks eyes with her, looking at her in what looks like understanding or maybe acknowledgement. Either way, it’s slow in illumination and miserably helpless and it somehow soothes the goosebumps that were beginning to appear against the tauth muscles of Rebeka’s forearms. 

Despite the fridgidness seemingly surrounding her, Rebeka takes another spoonful of ice cream.

Lu chooses then to strike, “Is that why you kissed me? Because you couldn’t avoid him by yourself?”

The silver utensil clunks loudly as it hits Rebeka’s tooth and she feels the tendrils of her nerves light up in alertness.

“I kissed you because I was bored and you were there,” Rebeka states defensively, “and it wasn’t exactly like you had no part in that.” She remembers very distinctly that Lu was the one to swipe her tongue against Rebeka’s lips as a request to deepen what was no more than a peck initially.

Lu clarifies, “I know. I just wanted to get your reasoning.” 

Wanted to categorize her actions is probably more likely, but Rebeka doesn’t say that one out loud. See, Lu wasn’t the only incisive one. Psychoanalyzing goes both ways.

Lu scoots closer, the silk of her shorts riding up as she does, and she firmly takes the spoon out Rebeka’s hand, places it on the coffee table and then does the same to the ice cream.

Rebeka grips one of Lu’s calves and uses that momentum to push her legs across Rebeka’s lap, until they’re close enough that Rebeka barely needs to raise her voice above a whisper as she states, “We don’t need to be at a party to kiss.”

Lu nods, agreeing with Rebeka for what she thinks might be the first time, “It’d be more efficient if we weren’t, probably.”

“Probably,” Rebeka repeats.

Lu wraps her arms around Rebeka’s neck, uses that to pull herself up so there’s less of a difference in height and stops short of pressing her lips against Rebeka’s. She breathes out, quickly, and pauses, like she can’t bring herself to initiate the makeout. Like maybe they do actually need to be under the anonymity of a dimness that’s only unveiled by streaks of neon lights and steadily swerving between a jammed crowd that’s distinctly set apart from the stillness of their current situation for this to work, for them to work. 

Lu tugs Rebeka forward, pulls on the end of her ponytail and, when she doesn’t get the hint, leans in to close the space between them.

There’s a tangible awkwardness to the way they move. Careful at first, testing the way they’ll both have to relearn the mechanics now, with a different partner than either of them are used to. Lu’s spine hits against the table more than once and Rebeka’s pretty certain she’s not going to be the primary cause for the bruises lining Lu’s back the next morning. 

She decides to make up for it with bites against Lu’s exposed collarbone and fingers tracing against curves, exploring all the slopes of Lu’s body that Rebeka hadn’t noticed she had subconsciously been taking note of through those tauntingly sheer white school shirts. 

They work together to burn off all the extra calories for the rest of the night.

It only occurs to Rebeka when her hair has come undone, strands falling messily obscuring her vision and Lu has her face pressed in Rebe’s neck still gasping to catch her breath and they’re both a little dazed and completely blissed out, that there was a perfectly good couch available for use behind them.

The ice cream melts.

The copper pan is thrown out.

They continue to kiss at parties. And then not at parties too. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i hate myself for how often i mentioned samuel too, i'm sorry. i may have gotten carried away with the kaleidoscope comparison that was meant to be a sentence and then spiraled into it's own section, i'm not sorry about that.

**Author's Note:**

> I have a tumblr (theuniversezecho) for those still struggling to come to terms with the fact that season 4 is going to be a disaster and needs to complain about it with someone.


End file.
